


fifteen ways to keep a secret

by clarinetta



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Pastiche, Poetry, karen's mysterious past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:25:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pretend you made up the needle, that the tourniquets don't exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fifteen ways to keep a secret

**Author's Note:**

> A pastiche of Fifteen Ways To Stay Alive by Daphne Gottlieb, written so that I could talk about my idea of Karen Page as a former drug addict without actually having to plot it out in a linear way. Linear time is the bane of my existence.

1\. Offer them your neat little sidesteps, your half-truths, your vague gestures and dismissive smiles and changes of subjects. Do not offer them your scars. Do not offer them your shame. Do not offer them the true depths of your terror.

2\. Wear your scars under your makeup.

3\. Pretend you don’t understand their questions.

4\. Pretend you don’t know how to lie.

5\. Offer your heart to the city. Offer the city to the man in black.

6\. Only wear your new clothes. The old ones remind you of who you used to be. They can only cause more bleeding, more holes in your arm, more hunger.

7\. Exhale.

8\. Realize that these secrets are not your Achilles heel, are not the things that murdered you in a back alley, are not the thieves that finally wrenched open your mouth and dragged the words out of you like horses pulling dead weight. That secret has yet to bury itself in you. 

9\. Use the alcohol to drown your memories of the people who took you in off the street, who gave you a bed and a full needle when you had nothing else, who held you when your first hit was almost too much, so that their faces are blurred and their voices don’t call to you anymore.

10\. Practice your lies in front of the mirror until they sound true. Practice them in the languages you know, in the tongues you are surrounded by. I am fine. _Estoy bien. Spasiba, kharasho._

11\. Don’t trust their smiles. Don’t trust their words. Don’t trust. 

12\. Pretend you made up the needle, that the tourniquets don’t exist.

13\. Pretend there is no such thing as addiction.

14\. Pretend there was no high so pure you would have killed for it, pretend that you do not know the feeling of the gun’s recoil and never will again, pretend like the entire life you’ve built here depends on it, because it does. Pretend that you don’t know what it means to give up the only thing that matters, that you never had to heave yourself out of the muck and clean yourself off when every hand you could see was trying to yank you back down. Pretend there are no holes in your arm--the tourniquet never tied, the spoon passed to someone else, your voice saying “no thanks” and that was it. You do not need help. You can breathe on your own. You are an open book. You are trustworthy, you are worth loving, and there are no secrets.

15\. Forget your real name.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to tumblr user loccent-commander-choi for giving me ideas and pushing me to actually write this!


End file.
